Study On Modular Manipulator Design And Its Path Planning Method

Along with the increasing of human space missions, there will be more and more space tasks need to be completed. As the only executing terminal of space missions, space manipulator plays an important role in all kinds of tasks. And it can be seen in the near future that the application of manipulator will be more extensive. In the dissertation a modular manipulator is designed, and some basic test of the manipulator system and study on path planning is done.According to the requirements of the assignment, the technical specifications and design scheme are given. Then the modular joints which have the characteristic of high reduction ratio and high torque is designed. And we also select the key components of the modular joint based on the technical specifications. The structure of the joints and arm links are designed, and the intensity check of parts is done via finite element analysis.The kinematics of space robots is derived and we analyze the relationship between the error of the modular joint and the terminal error of the manipulator. Based on kinematics we derive, two kinds of path planning methods is study in this dissertation, they are classical method and the multi-agent method. In the former method the inversion of generalized Jacobian matrix is required. The computational load of this method would increase with the increasing of the freedoms of manipulators; while using the multi-agent method we can do the path planning without inversing the generalized Jacobian matrix so that the computational load will be less than the classical method.The experimental platform of the manipulator is established, and the basic test of the manipulator system is done. The path planning algorithm are carried out. The results show that the manipulator is proved to work well and the path planning method is effective.